QUICUMQUE VULT. - A creed that entered the Roman Breviary under the name of the Athanasian Creed, because for some time it was held to be a composition of St. Athanasius.
The Latin text, handed down by manuscripts of the 8th century, is the original, whereas the Greek text is a translation. On this point modern criticism is in agreement; opinions differ, however, in determining the date of composition and the author. Once the ancient opinion, which as early as the 7th century attributed it to St. Athanasius, had been discarded, scholars tried to discover the true author among the Latin Fathers. In the 17th century J. Anselmi was the first to think of Vincent of Lérins; this opinion was taken up again and reinforced two centuries later by G. D. W. Ommaney; and, although it was attacked from the outset by B. Montfaucon, it did not fail to have followers down to our own day. Others thought of Honoratus of Arles (d. 429), Hilary of Arles (d. 449), Fulgentius of Ruspe (d. 533), Caesarius of Arles (d. 542), Martin of Braga (d. c. 580), Eusebius of Vercelli (d. c. 371), Ambrose of Milan (d. 397).
A decisive step toward determining the time and place of the disappearance of the Symbol was taken by Dom G. Morin, who pointed to Caesarius of Arles as the first witness of this formula of faith, setting the year 542 as the terminus ante quem. Thanks to the recent discovery (1940) of the pamphlet Excerpta Vincentii Lirinenis, it can now be established that certain articles characteristic of the Q. v. are found originally in that writing. This considerably confirms the opinion that sees Lérins as the cradle of the Q. v. Vincent of Lérins is therefore at an advantage over all the Fathers who can be brought into comparison, with regard to the formulas that came to swell the Q. v. In particular, the most typical part in matters of Christology is found included in what is most personal to Vincent in his Excerpta. He is therefore the most immediate precursor of the Q. v. Moreover, certain testimony to the existence of the Symbol is found in a homily of St. Caesarius of Arles, and his immediate precursor is St. Vincent of Lérins. Thus the limits within which the Q. v. was slowly elaborated lie between 542, the date of the death of St. Caesarius, and the years 434-40, the date of the publication of the Excerpta. Perhaps it is not rash to fix this date in the second half of the 5th century.
In the liturgy the Q. v. is read at Prime on the feast of the Most Holy Trinity and on the lesser Sundays after the Epiphany and Pentecost, when in the Sunday Office no commemoration is made of a double or of an octave.
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Giuseppe Madoz